How much reparation did Germany have to give the Allies in particular England France and the US at the end of World War 2?

Answer 1

The question is complicated. To the best of my knowledge the Allies never counted the value of the things they took out of Germany, but they considered it "reparations" nevertheless. They also forbade the Germans from counting.

The Russians took much equipment, telephone switchboards, factories etc. Some of this was sent to them from Western Germany by the U.S. The Russians also used millions of German civilians and former soldiers as slave labor well into the 1950's.

The Russians also took a quarter of Germany and divided it between Russia and Poland, after ethnically cleansing its inhabitants. This was done in accordance with agreements with the U.S. and UK so should count as some sort of "reparations" deal that the U.S. and UK too were responsible for.

As a comparison, imagine if after the next war that the U.S. looses, Canada and Mexiko take over a quarter of the U.S. That would mean Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada California, Washington, and Oregon, and of course the inhabitants would have to be kicked out back into the remainder of the U.S. and be replaced by Mexicans.

While the Russians took much equipment for the sake of rebuilding Russia, the U.S. France and the U.K. also took many things, but for partly different reasons. They wanted to get rich, and they wanted to make Germany weak so it couldn't threaten them again.

The Americans, UK, and French took liquid and movable assets such as tug boats, all the gold in the banks, and they kept on dismantling or blowing up German civilian factories well into the 1950's. The U.S. kept 10% of this equipment, most taken factories went to the UK and France and Russia.

The U.S. got very rich by stealing all German patents, and all equipment of an intellectual value, for example the tape-recorders that made AMPEX huge were based on equipment taken in Germany.

All the costs for feeding, clothing and housing the occupation troops had to be paid by Germany, although it is perhaps questionable if that should be counted as reparations.

Since the Allies had agreed amongst themselves that reparations would be in the form of slave labor, both the U.S., UK, and France used slaves, until 1949. The U.S. used several hundred thousand in Germany itself, it kept soldiers in the U.S. where they had to do the harvesting, and they sent 740,000 prisoners to France where many of them starved to death or died from accidents in dangerous work such as demining without proper equipment/training. The U.K. kept most of its forced laborers as agricultural fieldworkers.

Since the U.S. and U.K. prohibited private import of food into Germany, and themselves provided very low rations to the occupied population, the starving Germans had no choice but to sell all their valuables to the occupation troops on the black market in return for military food rations. Those who had nothing to sell, and were too weak to steal presumably died, especially in the "hungerwinter" of 1947.

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There were no reparations in money from Germany to the western allies after WWII. The reason is simply that Germany had no financial resources with which to pay. The country was ruined, bankrupted, wrecked, and occupied.

In the east it was another matter. In additional to mass rape, murder, and incarceration of common soldiers the Soviet forces looted the country of anything they could steal. Since Germany had little money to steal, the Soviets stole trains, art, automobiles, furniture, Plumbing fixtures, bathtubs, jewelry, and power plants. They broke into private homes and looted all the possessions of the inhabitants. Any who resisted were murdered on the spot. Museums in Russia still contain vast amounts of the stolen art, as they do additional stolen art from their Spanish campaign, just prior to WWII.

Americans did not have government sanctioned robbery but individual soldiers often broke into museums and art galleries and stole priceless antiquities. Much damage was done to these artifacts. Newspaper articles still come out occassionally where some member of the US Army has died and his decendants have found a pricelss sword or book from a German museum. There doesn't seem to be much morale quality in these people because every article I have seen on this topic indicates these people hold the items for ransom, demanding hard cash from the Germany government, before they will return the stolen items. Generally the Germans cough up the money, trying to restore their heritage. Personnally I'd like to see the USA government get involved and start prosecuting those who stole these materials and did not make an honest attempt to restore them to their rightful owners.

Otherwise, the French took 'reparations' in the form of slave labor. Thousand of German POWs were forced to work in French coal mines where about 5,000 died. Many German troops, who would have starved otherwise, 'joined' the French army and fought in that countries Vietnam War.

I know of no such brutality or looting taking place from the other victorious nation, Britain. In fact, the British took the lead in providing basic food supplies to the starving civilians in their part of occupied Germany. British civilians underwent deprivation and rationing for several years after the war in order to ensure these supplies were adequate. This should be contrasted with the brutal treatment of the British on German civilians after WWI. In that conflict, even after the armistice was signed and all fighting had stopped, the British continued to hold their blockade in place, causing an estimate 1,000,000 German babies to die in 1919.

Answer 2

reparations might never have come without the 40-year court fight and advocacy of concentration camp Survivor Hugo Princz. In 1995, he and a reported 10 other Americans wrested a separate $2.1 million pledge from Germany, breaking ground for the broader negotiations.